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Hey, I actually just ran into this myself - lucky me I'm not using the terminal much these days.

raforon: Have you installed anything from Unstable or Experimental, outside of the Testing or Mint repositories? I got this after I installed Gnome 3 (probably from Experimental), and it was a 200+ Mb haul with several updates to libraries. One of them made GDM look... not so terribly interesting. Recovering from that will probably not be pretty, or easy, if that's the cause of your problem. I think there's a handy command for the terminal that lets you check for this relatively easily, but since I don't know it, and your terminal being apparently unreliable... Otherwise you can also open Synaptic, double-check that you have 'Show package properties in the main window' enabled, and look through all of your installed packages' Versions-tab. Look for (unstable) or (experimental) after the version string.

I have not installed anything from unstable or experimental. I am too paranoid for that. It has been doing this since the clean install since the start.Instead of looking at all individual packages, Is there a command line way to check if something accidently got installed from unstable or experimental?

There should be, but I don't know it. Could be apt-policy. Maybe there's a knowledgebase listing all the ins and outs of apt-get somewhere?

*Runs face-first into Gnome 3 failing catastrophically, recovering, while taking note* Hm... What version is your gnome-terminal? Just whether it's 2.30.2 isn't enough, I think the full version-string as listed in Synaptic (or, for that matter, commandline apt output) is necessary.

Oh, right... Look, adding a repository is a bit of work. Not a lot, but you do have to try to actually get something from Unstable or Experimental - which I did, btw, absolutely had to have a look at Gnome 3, more fool me so soon. So: if you don't know whether you've installed something from Unstable/Experimental or not, you will in 12 cases out of 5 NOT have done so. But, if you've been sticking with the default repositories, you should absolutely not have this problem with the terminal.

Nnnnnnnnng, you should not have these problems! Stop it right now! So, you have a fully updated system - that's good; then we can compare versions. What server do you have Synaptic set to download from, and what update policy do you have? (Highest version-number/Installed/From repository [x])What versions of the following packages do you have? (Mine will be listed in brackets.)

And you still have problems with the terminal? Then I'm officially out of ideas as well. When I got this problem, I had just installed Gnome 3 + Shell from Experimental - when I got back to a clean base on Testing, the problem went away. I can't think of anything else. You didn't say what server you get your packages from, though. Try the main server - US, or whatever. Any Main server. I'm using the Icelandic server, incidentally. (ftp.is.debian.org)

Hi,I was just wondering, when I zoom those silly characters, they resemble special characters. Is it possible that there may be some conflict with different language packs?I a using main mirror US for downloading packages.

Special characters they are indeed, but if you haven't done something exotic to your keyboard layout, it's more likely that your keyboard input is being misinterpreted. I suppose language/locale is the last aspect to look at. How are your language, location, and keyboard layout set? Any input-method selected or installed?

(Just to double-triple-quintuple-check: Have you done your updates using Synaptic, with nothing remaining in the Upgradeable list (i.e. Select all updates -> Apply), or the more selective MintUpdate?)